My Mother
by Dlbn
Summary: Ritsuka and the rest of the Aoyagi cast talk about their mothers and the impacts they have had on their lives.


Disclaimer: I do NOT own Loveless or anything familiar from it. I do, however, own Nisei and Nisei's mothers. I make NO money off of writing in this category.

SEIMEI AYOAGI

From the moment my little brother was born, I began to despise my mother. Not because he was born, because he is my world. He was born for _me_. But because of _her_. That vile, spineless woman. Our father was a drunken, cheating, fool, and she _knew_ it. She _knew_ he wasn't worth the time of day, and yet she _still_ let that filth into the house; let him share her bed. The only thing those two were good for were for giving me and my sweet, beloved Ritsuka life. They serve no other purpose now, other then to put a roof over his head. And she can't even do that! When he lost his memories (which I admit was my fault, but that's my burden to bear so I'll skip over that for now) and his personality changed, she had the gall, the _nerve_ to lay a hand on my Ritsuka for something that wasn't even his fault or in his control! My blood would boil when I saw that vile, worthless woman put a hand-or blunt object, which she was fond of using-onto Ritsuka's skin in "punishment". But for his sake, I would merely get between the two of them and restrain her from injuring him any further. I'd bandage him up, offer words of encouragement, and practically beg him to just run away next time. But once my Ritsuka was asleep in bed, I couldn't help but extract my revenge on the she-demon. A well worded spell would ensure she learned her lesson, if only for a bit, while still maintaining that I was her sweet, loving, caring, innocent little boy that I pretended to be. I once promised her that I would take her away from our worthless father. She and Ritsuka and I would be together and we wouldn't need him, because I would take care of all of us. And when he got old enough, Ritsuka would help. But there was nothing I would like more then to wring that woman's…no…that little _girl's_ neck and take Ritsuka away so we could be safe.

But hey, a guy could dream…

MIMURO

Ever since my father passed away, my mother became even more of a disciplinarian then she already was. She wasn't abusive like Seimei and Ritsuka's mother was, according to Seimei, but she was very controlling. Everyone I talked to, everything I did or said or wanted or liked, it was all due to her influence. But imagine my shock last year when she practically disowned me after I revealed my sexuality and that I was with Nisei, who she didn't like the moment she met him for some reason. Now, don't get me wrong. I love my mother and I'd go home in a heartbeat to be with her if she would only let me. But what kind of a mother disowns her son for not fitting into her perfect, cookie cutter depiction of a son? So what if I'm gay and she doesn't approve of my boyfriend? (Who I've been madly in love with since I met him in two years ago). I get good grades, I'm never in trouble at school, I do what she wants and what she orders. Isn't that good enough? No? Well, I guess not…

But no matter what she says or does or how much she dislikes or disapproves of me or anything I do, I will _always_ love the woman who gave life to me; after carrying me around for nine long months.

RITSUKA AOYAGI

My mom's unwell…anyone should know that. Soubi thinks she needs to be taught a lesson, that he needs to deal with her. Don't do anything to her, Soubi. She doesn't mean to do what she does, I swear! And if she wants to hit me, then let her! If it makes her feel better, if it helps her stay…Sensei, I'll be fine. You worry too much. It was an accident. My mother wouldn't hurt me on purpose. How silly! Seimei, don't hurt mom. You know she doesn't mean it. It's not her fault, it's mine! So let me be punished! It's my fault for not being her Ritsuka!

As long as she doesn't leave me like Seimei did, I don't care what she does…okay?

NISEI AKAME

No matter how much of a bastard my stupid father was, my mother was always a saint. She could never do wrong to anyone; which was probably why she didn't physically go after him for treating me like a lesser life form. Some people might say that my mother is an enabler; that she lets me get away with everything, which spawns my father's being strict. But you know what? She may be an enabler, but she's also a safe house. Father started being like this long before she became an enabler. Maybe that was how she coped? If I could, I'd take my mother and my sister and run away. I'd escape my father and provide for them. I'd give mother the son she always thought I was, and the life she always wanted us to have. In contrast to him, mother was kind and gentle. She put others before herself, and would always stop to help someone; regardless of how much they needed or deserved said help.

But what would my poor mother do if she knew just what a monster her beloved son was?

SOUBI AGATSUMA

I don't know much about my mother, since she died when I was six. All I knew was that she was the fighter of the man who took me in-Minami Ritsu, my tormentor-, she loved to paint, she loved my father, was completely loyal to Minami, and that she looked like me. I can hardly remember her voice, but her face is something I see in the mirror every day. We have the same long, flaxen hair, though my dark blue eyes come from my father. I inherited not only her painting skill, but her fighting skill as well. She was one of the few that knew the spells "The Power of Suggestion", and "Memory Regression". She could make someone do something they didn't want to and yet they'd have no recollection of it, and she could make them forget events, or even days at a time. She was strong willed and wouldn't take no for an answer. She'd fight for everything; to make a name for herself, for Ritsu, against the original Septimal Moon, for me. Such a shame that a great soul, a beautiful woman, was taken away from this world alongside my father, Hibiki, by a drunk driver. Ritsu only liked me because I reminded him of my mother. He wanted her, but she had eyes for another. And, thus, he never got her. He and my father didn't get along, so Ritsu wasn't welcome around much. It makes me wonder why my mother had said that it was Ritsu who was to take me if she died. Because of his obsession being paired with his inability to get her all for himself, Ritsu took me instead. Took my ears, my innocence; most likely imagining it was my mother he was taking instead.

I hated my mother for giving me the features that made Ritsu yearn and pine for me, but in the end, it wasn't her fault.

YOJI SAGAN

What's a 'mother'? Can Nagisa-sensei be classified as one? Well, heh, why not? She _did_ create Natsuo and I, after all. And mothers did that. They created children. Not in test tubes and labs like Natsuo and I, but it was close enough. So she was the only thing we could really ever call or consider to be our mother. Maybe she was our aunt. I look so much like her sister that it's pathetic. But then again, her sister died when she was in middle school. Eh, she could have just harvested her sister's DNA and used it later on to make me, right? Or maybe we _are_ related in some way…? Eh, why does it matter to me? We've made her Mother's Day crap every year, and every year she'd pretend to care, but throw it in her closet or the garbage when we weren't around. So maybe that horrid woman isn't my mother…

I really hope she isn't…

NATSUO SAGAN

Would it _really_ be bad if Nagisa-sensei was our mother? Sure, she's shrill, moody, throws tantrums and yells a lot, is in love with that dummy Ritsu…but that doesn't really make her a bad person, not really. Perhaps her unrequited-though not secret because even Ritsu could tell-love for him and only him stopped her from finding anyone else. And with her age increasing and maternal instincts getting harder and harder to resist, maybe she wanted kids. But if Ritsu wasn't able to give them to her, then no one else could. So she made Yoji and I? It sounds weird, and odd for a 12 year old to be thinking this deeply, but it's possible. Nana suggested it first. Nagisa-sensei is annoying as hell; no one can deny that. But does being annoying make you a bad mother? Aren't most mothers annoying to their kids sometimes? So maybe her being our mother wouldn't be that bad.

After all, it was better then having no mother at all.

YUIKO HAWATARI

Yuiko's momma is the best in the world! She may not be home when Yuiko gets home, since she works, but she's still amazing! Even after working all day, momma can still come home and cook, clean, and help Yuiko with her homework! Momma helps Yuiko make strawberry jam every year, after we pick them with daddy. But momma can't always be there for me. I can't talk to her about Ritsuka-kun. She already thinks his mother is crazy. What would she think of him? Yuiko can't tell her about bullies at school. She'd step in, yes, but that would make it worse for Yuiko.

No matter how much Yuiko loves momma, there are just some things she _can't_ know.

YAYOI SHIOIRI

My mother ran out on my father and me when I was only three years old. I hardly remember her, but I know that her oddly colored hair gave way to the differently colored tips of my own hair. My father remarried about two years later, to my first step-mother. The two of them fought constantly, since my father was _still_ looking for my mother in vain. It wouldn't be until my tenth year on this planet that we learned she was killed in a motorcycle accident that left two injured and one other besides my mother deceased. My father married my second step mother when I was eight. He still yearned to find my mother, but he hardly spoke of her unless we were alone in privacy or I asked something for school or the like. When I was nine, my father and my second step mother had a daughter together. However, she grew ill when she was a year old, with some form of leukemia (I wasn't really told much about it) and died a year after that. She was only two years old. But my second step mother stayed with my father for one more year before she left him for someone who didn't remind her of her deceased daughter by just looking at him. My father is now single, but he has a girlfriend that lives with us. They argue a lot, but they never break up. She's always here and she never leaves. She wants to get married, but he refuses to do so. Marriage didn't work out for him the first three times, so why try a fourth? I'd rather have her be dad's girlfriend.

Because girlfriends stay, but mothers only say goodbye when things get too tough to handle.

RITSU MINAMI

BANG, POW, *screaming*. Those were likely the last sounds my mother ever heard before this cruel world took her from us. To this day, I still curse the name of my bastard father for her death. He may not have been the one behind the gun, but he may as well have. If he hadn't forced my mother to get a job-she was hired at a local bank and was a teller there for two years before her death-to finally be 'useful', as he put it, then she wouldn't have been there when the gunmen came into the bank to rob it. She wouldn't have been the only teller working that day. They never would have pointed the gun at her and shot when she didn't move fast enough. She wouldn't have had to die in a pool of her _own blood_ on the _cold_, _hard_ floor of the bank; thinking her husband and sacrifice found her useless, and that her son was just as useless as she. Maybe if she was still around, things would have been different. Iyani and I wouldn't have been kicked out of Seven Voices for never winning, because mother wouldn't let him do so. Maybe after seeing my father try to kick us out of the school, she finally would have grown a backbone like my Iyani had and left him and took us both with her as we were suspended. If my mother was here, things would be so much different.

I hope my father is in hell, not in heaven; being a selfish curse on my mother, even in the afterlife.

MIKADO GOMON

Curfew, lessons, tutoring, classes, clubs; things I was forced to do under my mother's careful scrutiny. Keep up appearances, keep up the family image, manners and politeness, don't speak unless spoken to, hide your emotions; they make you weak. Those are the things my mother taught me. But she had a reason for teaching me these things; To train me to being the best representative of the Gomon family I could be. My brother was already a disgrace; a military drop out who went to college but didn't finish and lived off his girlfriend's family because his own was too ashamed to take him in. I couldn't disgrace the family like him. _I_ had to go to college. _ I_ had to be a proper young woman. _I_ had to be the one the family's image rested on. _I_ had to finish everything I started. _I_ had to rebuild our family's character and reputation. _I_ had to bottle up everything, because perfect young women are seen and not heard unless necessary. But she had _reasons_ for making me do all those activities, for teaching me all those lessons.

She had a reason, so I could understand.

NAGISA SAGAN

I don't know my biological mother. My sister and I were taken from her at a young age. She couldn't take care of us, through no fault of her own because she was sick, so we couldn't stay with her. My sister was only year younger then me, and she remembered mother even less then I did. Neither of us could even put a name to a face or anything. If I were to see my mother today, I would have no idea who she was. My adoptive mother once said that I look like mom, so that would be my only indication as to who I was talking to. My adoptive mother wasn't a bad person. She was strict about curfew and all that jazz, but that's expected. When my sister was killed by another unit when I was seven, I felt alone. My adoptive mother was there for me, yes, but she fell into a depression as well. I wonder if my biological mother would have done the same if she had been the one to raise us…I always wondered what a biological mother would be like to her kids. Would she be as stern and tough as my adoptive mother was? Or would she be cold and aloof? I always wanted to know, so I decided long ago that I would have kids. There was only one person in this world I would consider having children by through sexual reproduction, but he was so infatuated by his fighter-and eventually her offspring-, that I had no chance and no way. Even now with both her and the kid gone, he's still so attached. I discovered after she died that he would never be with me, because he could and would only be with her.

And that is what spurred my idea to create my own biological children; using DNA recovered from a hairbrush once used by my beloved younger sister.

NANA SANOTOME

My mother was a caring individual. I don't really think there's anyone in Septimal Moon who complains about their mother, other then Aoyagi for obvious reasons. But unlike the obvious detachments the other feel with their mothers, I can be confident in saying that I felt very attached to my mother. And long after she died of cancer while sleeping, I still felt very attached to her. Perhaps it was what they called 'motherly love' reaching to me form even beyond the grave. That kind of love is powerful, so I wouldn't really be surprised if that was it. But perhaps it was because of the one little fact I couldn't ever forget or ignore.

If it wasn't for my mother being his babysitter when we were little, I may have never met my fighter.

KIO KAIDO

Men aren't held as important in our family. The Kaido family is a female dominated society. That being said, my own mother didn't seem to want much to do with me. She raised me until I was about three, but then I was in the care of nannies and hardly saw my mother. And when I was almost 16 years old, only a few days before my 16th birthday, actually, I was kicked out. From then on, I lived with my father and didn't even hear one word from my mother. She would pass on when I was eighteen (though I can't honestly say I was bothered by it. She was a horrid woman towards me). Shieko, the woman who had bore my daughter-though I had no idea how because I don't recall ever having sex with her, let alone my daughter being born (considering that my daughter isn't that much younger then I am)-became the head of the household. My daughter is next in line for that position, the poor thing.

I only hope my daughter's mother isn't taken from her before she really gets a chance to know her.

SHIKIKO KAIDO

Father is a weak man. Mother always said so. When she was artificially inseminated to have me, she didn't think anything about it. But when she found out that it was Kaido Kio who's DNA she had received, she wasn't too pleased. Even so, she greets him with civility and grace like she should. Whether or not he is a woman, which he isn't, he is still a Kaido and thus deserves at least a little of the respect the Kaido family gets from one another and non Kaidos. My mother is not a Kaido, but because of my father, I am. Perhaps that is what I like best about my mother. She isn't biologically one of the conspirators and liars that make up the Kaido family.

And maybe that's why out of all of them, I like my mother best.

HITOMI SHINONOME

My family was always so close. We knew each and every thing about one another, and spent our free time trying to learn more. My mom, a single mother, had it rough with two jobs and four kids to feed; my younger sister and I, and our younger half brother and older half sister. Our father died when we were young, and my step father left my mother for some bar floozy he met one day and knew for two weeks before he took off with her. From then on, mother was so protective. She'd tell my sisters and I to stay away from boys; that they only wanted to use us until we had nothing more to give, and then toss us to the side like bags of garbage on a sidewalk. Perhaps my mother's words, and not my own choice, were the driving force behind my decision to keep my ears until I was married and ready to have children. Knowing how cruel the world could be, how parents could take their protectiveness so far that their children became them, instead of being their own people, I decided to become an educator. And not just any grade level. It had to be elementary school. I was elated when Johansson elementary hired me as a sixth grade teacher when I was twenty one years old. I would be able to touch the hearts of young kids before they went to middle school; right on the line between being desperate to stay children, and their growing desires to become adults. My collegues laughed at me for feeling like I was a mother to my students. I was an educator, a protector, a life coach, a friend, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, and a mother; to kids who had it all, and to kids who wanted more then the bad hand they were dealt.

If it wasn't for my mother being overbearing, I never would have stepped up to the position I know I am so right for; the one telling them it's okay to be themselves, when everyone else is saying it's not.

YAMATO NAKANO

I never knew my biological mother. Or any mother, for that matter. I was an orphan form the time I was born. My father had allegedly died while my mom was still pregnant, and my mom died in childbirth from complications. Nagisa-sensei served as a guardian and mother for me after my sixth foster care home, which I was taken out of at age nine because they were crazy abusive. While I was grateful to Nagisa for bringing me into the Zero project and protecting and caring for me like a mother, I couldn't help but wonder about my own mother. no one had ever told me about her before. Nagisa-sensei didn't want to get the information, but after some prodding from both myself and my lover and fighter, Koya, she got Seven to get the information for me. My mother was twenty three when she was pregnant with me. My father was written on my birth certificate. He was a twenty seven year old police officer. He was apparently killed in the line of duty while my mother was pregnant with me (six months pregnant, records showed) My mother was from France. She wasn't Japanese, but she had moved here after becoming a certified Japanese-French translator, and fell in love with my father. Well, the 'in love' part was speculation. Records couldn't tell that; only people could. But something about my birth mother made me smile. It gave me hope that one day I could be a mother and make the same choice she had made, albeit under different circumstances, because I couldn't _begin_ to imagine leaving Koya alone on this Earth. My mother was very ill when she got pregnant and wasn't getting enough nutrients to her own body. Her body was starving her to give everything to me that I would need to develop and be born happy and healthy.

She could have had an abortion in order to save her life, but she refused. My mother had wanted to give me life, even at the cost of her own.

KOYA SAKAGAMI

Mother was never a happy woman. She was cold and distant, and even the simplest thing set her off like it was the end of the world. I learned to tread lightly, keep details to a minimum, and only ask when spoken to. My father was an abusive drunk, so he was no help in that department. When my grades were good enough to get me into Seven Voices Academy (I had been found by a young male named Aoyagi Seimei; Septimal Moon's number five, the tester.). Sagan Nagisa-sensei was the one who recruited me. My drunk father was too stupid to know what was going on, and my mother simply didn't care enough to read the fine print. Once I was at the Academy, I would learn the truth. I was to be paired up with my Sacrifice, and from then on, I was the foster daughter of Nagisa Sagan. She used myself in the Zero Project, which would later lead me to the love of my life; Yamato, my sacrifice. In the beginning, I hated her for tricking my parents like that. But when I look back on it, the woman had really saved my life. One more day, and my mother may have been just pissed off enough that she would trick my drunken father into killing me somehow.

I promise that if and when the day comes that I myself am a mother, I will _never_ be like my mother; my children would show love and affection, not hate and fear.

KATSUKO-SENSEI

People often ask me why I wanted to become a therapist. I understand why they wonder, and I wish I had a definitive answer for them. I suppose it goes back to my mother. She was diagnosed with Schizophrenia when I was seven years old. My father tried to shield my siblings and I from it, but we all knew what was happening. My sister and brother often got _angry_ with our mother; angry over something she couldn't control. They didn't understand, they didn't want to, and, even to this day, they don't understand even an inkling. When I was seventeen, my eighteen year old brother said that he would rather have mom dead then for her to be a 'pain in the ass' like she was. I snapped at him, and maybe even hit him across the face. It wasn't mother's fault, she didn't _ask_ to be schizophrenic. My sister didn't stick up for mother either. She called her nasty things, like a 'burden' or 'useless'. My father passed away hearing nothing positive about mother come from either of their mouths, and mother was institutionalized and never saw them again after my brother turned twenty. They simply didn't want to take care of her, and, thus, had her locked away so they didn't have to. And they were guilt free. From the day they put my mother away without even consulting me and seeing if I wanted to have her live with me so I could help her, or some other alternative, I vowed that I would become a psychiatrist and educate people. I'd educate them on various mental illnesses and help patients who wanted help with their illnesses and such. I'd educate their families so my patients wouldn't suffer and be put away the way that my mother was.

From the day I met my ten year old patient Ritsuka Aoyagi, I was certain I had made the right decision; all thanks to my mother…even if she would never know.


End file.
